<i>Shefali Misra fought the 16th Lok Sabha election with the Aam Aadmi Party from Sitapur Parliamentary Constituency, Uttar Pradesh. She is a development professional, former international civil servant, human rights activist and writer.</i>
It's going to be a matter of time before the proverbial David defeats Goliath. For now, the reality is that my campaign, and those of most AAP candidates, was wiped out by the saffron wave. Years of experience as an analyst and decades spent in villages working with communities, got me just 2,300 odd votes.
The New York Times called me a political novice and perhaps I indeed am. There is no other way to describe this failure. Yet was I treading failure or walking a new intersection between two worlds?
Sitting at the Taj Mahal, Mumbai, just a few months before my candidature was announced in early March, the CEO of an international company told me that the next generation of change will be defined by how well we bring about intersection between worlds that have so far been delinked. He was referring to the private sector engaging with corporate social responsibility in the long term. "You can't do business without giving back ethically'' he said.
You can't do politics without people's aspirations and rights being at center-stage. It's not a once-in-five-years voting entitlement, it's about politicians ethically giving back to the community that voted for them.
My hard-core disdain for manipulative politics and irresponsible politicians led me to seek something fresh and invigorating in AAP. Several leaders of social movements connected unanimously with the party. I jumped on and launched my campaign in Sitapur on March 11, 2014.
<i>Jhaaru, Jhaaru, Jhaaru - agar chate hain bhrashtacharmukt sashan, mehngai se rahat, rozgar evam eksakriya aur sikshit sandad toh AAP ko vote dein.</i> (broom, broom, broom, if you want a corruption-free administration, respite from price rise, employment and a committed and educated MP, vote for AAP)
My 50-day campaign, fought on a shoe-string budget, was spread across 800 of 1,600 villages. I personally visited over 300 of them. After a village walk, talks about voter rights, registration of local grievances and distribution of <i>mein hun aam aadmi</i> topis, we often left convinced that votes would follow. After all, Kejriwal's angry young man image had found ground in local markets and towns. I was well received as an educated and experienced candidate. Women loved the SHG (self-help groups) talk, they spoke about wanting jobs and pensions. Students swarmed in and joined our road shows. Awareness about the party in villages was quite low, but we were on a roll.
We had TATA mini trucks festooned with flags, hoardings and life-size pictures of Kejriwal and me roaming the constituency. Slogans shouting for the more than one billion people of India to engage in defining the discourse of India's politics filled Sitapurian ears for the first time and they seemed happy. My little convoy whizzed from village to village with the hundred odd volunteers I could muster without the support of the local sangathan, whose chief withdrew and remained angry throughout my campaign for being denied a ticket.
The topis were a big hit. We distributed thousands of them. Campaign usually started at noon and went on till about 11 at night. The time before and after was for internal meetings, dealing with money hungry vendors and volunteer issues.
I have to say the high of sitting on a TATA mini-van, shouting at the top of my voice about denial of rights and the need for citizens' empowerment appealed to both the social worker and the emerging politician in me.
Our focus was on identifying real issues and our findings were worse than expected. The MPs who had served the last three terms had nothing to show but apathy. We went to schools where the student teacher ratio was 500:2. ''This isn't a school, it is a dhaba. We serve three meals and that's it. In a single room, 1st standard classes are taught with children facing east, 2nd standard faces west, 3rd north and 4th standard faces south. Teachers sit in the Centre and that's about all the education children get.''
In another assembly segment, we met pradhans or village heads who had distributed just a handful of job cards in a population of 8000-10,000 people. ''Where does the money go Pradhan ji? You must have got five crores for MNREGA work. People haven't got any work and it's almost mid-year,'' I inquired. Stoic silence is what I got, because MNREGA money is often not distributed or is kept for dispensation when big rallies are organized and when some VIP comes to the village.
Out of a 100 youth, only 11 girls and 32 boys ever got jobs, maternal mortality in Sitapur is worse than Afghanistan, only 25 of every 100 deliveries occur in hospitals, 50,000 helpless and hungry flood victims were found living on the roadside for lack of resettlement. The list of worst indicators was endless.
The level of political apathy was shocking. I cried some nights looking at the magnitude of what had gone wrong.
My strategists and I decided to fight on the real issues and released a local manifesto with annual targets at a press conference. We openly challenged other parties to disclose why such apathy existed? We challenged them to debate with us. No one came.
But politics in UP is made of other stuff (as I was soon to realize). Political sabotage came in many forms. Threats, media black-outs by the top two Hindi dailies, and my own district teams campaigning against me. But the worst was the subtle but incessant demand for money, and the lack of awareness about the party and what it stands for in villages.
I understood during the last week of campaigning that election time was money-making time. Close to polling date, I personally received visits and calls from middlemen selling votes. The conversation was quite simple:
<b>Person:</b> ''Namaste, I'm the group leader for so-and-so and I have X thousand votes. I can give them to you for Y amount of money''.
<b>Me:</b> ''Thanks, I don't want to buy your votes. Also if you sell them for 500 a piece you will lose out on lakhs worth of benefits due to your people as citizens. Please vote for development this time."
The issue of money came up again and again. One morning I was visited by a local economist who said, "Strategy wise you have got it wrong. You need to learn UP's electoral politics. You don't sensitize people in villages about voter rights and AAP ka Swaraj et al just 50 days before polling. If you do, you will spend thousands running your cars and chasing your volunteers down to each village. Other parties leverage votes from large associations of citizens. Your average cost per person vote converted will be Rs 400-500 whereas the others will just massage the king pins and garner massive votes. Rs 10,000 to a local pradhan will get you at least 300 votes while you will spend over a lakh on your empowerment and anti-corruption spiel to reach the same number. Just pick up the pradhans, the unions and the associations; give them what they want."
That's why UP politics is traditionally called vote-bank politics. People are just votes, not citizens. But that was just the point I was trying to change.
''It's a win-win situation for all'', says Sameer a seasoned journalist. Everyone knows politicians won't come back. Politics here has been about buying votes either for cash or promises. It's the biggest industry in the constituency. Ask Ram Dular who has lost his home in the floods if he will exchange his vote for 500 rupees and keep his family alive for 2 more months or listen to your well-crafted discourse on rights and entitlements,'' he said. "Stay on for the long term, give them faith. It takes time. Your party will win."
As was eventually borne out, this was a once in five years opportunity for me to make a developmental point in the heartland of caste/class politics and for AAP to garner a six per cent vote share and be christened a national party. As everyone now realizes, heroes (or heroines for that matter) of Indian politics are not made by harnessing public anger and die hard idealism, but are made by rock solid governance ability, and on-the-ground party structure, and fighting-fit alliances.
On my journey to Delhi I overhear two investment bankers speaking of the GDP rising. "I better take the family out for vacation now - we are going to see a real boom, more jobs and more investments.... Busy days are up ahead," said one of them.
It seems like the immaculate elixir has arrived. David's fight against Goliath will continue. I have not come close to winning the people's mandate. Obviously a 50-day campaign is not going to do the trick. I am working on improving my sling shot.
<i>(These views are solely of the writer and do not represent the views of the Aam Admi Party.)</i>
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